getting out there

Beating the Winter Blues

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What weird weather – record highs for February, 70 degrees! It’s actually stuffy at night, but we’re keeping the windows shut because the rice and nut farmers are burning their fields and slash piles out on the west side and you never know when the wind will shift.

I don’t mind the farmers – dirt made my lunch, thank you a bunch. When I was a child and my grandfather had to have his field burned, he loaded us into the canned ham and headed to Fort Bragg for a week. We came home to wash the soot off the window sills.

I looked ahead at Accuweather – they are predicting a few rainy days in March, but nothing like the miracle it will take to make up for this dry Winter we’ve had.

No snowboarding for me this year – I play my Dick Dale records and carve around the apartment, cut some imaginary 360’s in the kitchen, do a jump or two out by the laundry line. I guess I should put my boots on one day just to make sure my feet will recognize them when the time comes. Heavy sigh…

I’ll tell you what – I’ve gained 5 pounds, and that means a couple of pairs of jeans won’t button. Damn you Germans and your lebkuchen! Really, it’s my own fault – January is my sleep month, can’t get excited about much of anything.

Although, tomorrow there’s a 3:30 meeting I’m looking forward to – the Local Governments Committee. It’s a good meeting because it’s a catch-all for issues that are before all the local commissions and boards, from Chico City Council to Butte Stupes to Chico Area Recreation District, and even the mosquito guy will be there.

Did you know, our mosquito board manager makes about $103,000 a year and only pays three percent of his pension?

There are many important issues on the agenda – including a report given by my kindergarten classmate, Dennis Schmidt. It’s fun to listen to Dennis – he still talks with a lisp, and his ears stick out just like they did when we were kids – eee-haw! He’s old and grumpy now, and working for the county, which means he’s up to no good about half the time. He’s the guy who raised the fee on pumping septic tanks, and now he wants property owners to be responsible for hiring their own security patrols for Humboldt Road.

Humboldt Road is a public road and a public disgrace – whole sections of asphalt missing. Here’s my guess – the county and the city are playing hot potato with maintenance of that road, since it goes in and out of the city/county. And, there’s so much illegal dumping up there, you’d think you were at the dump. There’s also homeless camps. Neither the city or the county wants to take responsibility for that stuff, so they are laying it on the property owners? Who pay whopping property taxes.

So Old Juanita has to get on her high horse and go down there and shame them. That’s about it. And I’ll tell you what – I’m not above making fun of a lisp and big ears and somebody who couldn’t tie his own damned shoes in kindergarten.

Weatherman says clear skies for the next four or five days – perfect setting for Super Moon.

By Wednesday the moon is supposed to be at it’s fullest, and will come very close to the Earth. At sunset the angle of the sun will turn it red, so we will have a Super Blood Moon. I notice sunset is the best time to view the Super Moon anyway – it looks like it is coming right out of the Sierra. As one giant orb heads for the sea, another giant orb comes flying out of the Earth!

And, by definition, we a Blue Moon – two full moons occurring in one month.

The sky is really clear after the storms, and the huge flocks of geese are still filing North. Good night to post a watch in a lawn chair.

Cause Frog and Toad are not just for kids, that’s a great story about friendship, enjoy!

And a great story for this time of year, when Spring is busting to get in, but Winter says, “I’m still in here!” – two sisters fighting over the bathroom.

That’s what it looked like here yesterday. One minute gloomy, black skies, threatening clouds, the next minute so bright a dummass like me might hang out a load of wash. And them swooosh! Rain comes pouring down out of a perfectly sunny sky.

Yes, I did hang laundry yesterday. Towels. I’d been wanting to do laundry for days. So I ran out there with my washing and hung it up on the clothesline, where it flapped in a fresh breeze for about two hours, not getting dry maybe, but dry-er. I like to have them outside for a few hours, and then leave them hanging over the stair railing over night. Instead I found myself bounding out to yank them down. That’s always a comedy, with the dogs yacking me back to the garage. I would guess it had been raining for about 5 minutes when I noticed the splash on my upstairs window, and they were already so wet I had to run them through the dryer for like a half hour before I could bring them in the house

Dammit! $$$$$$$$$$$$!

As I was running back and forth outside – all morning, really – I saw one after another line of geese moving North, headed for the feeding pools at Tule Lake, I assume. They fly back and forth all day in the early Winter. That’s when you can bag yourself a big fat goose, or maybe a few ducks. But now they are just flying North, all morning, big big lines, sometimes two or three groups tagging each other. When we were up in the hills the other day, we watched them circle and circle and circle in Butte Creek Canyon to get over the Sierra, they have to spiral themselves up that high. As I watched them through my binoculars it occurred to me what an awesome thing it is they do, every year.

So when I realized this is it, it’s going to rain. The skies over the mountains were absolutely black. I went back in the house to make some soup.

I’ve been trying to get in the habit of saving bits of green vegetables – like the core from cabbage or the heart of a head of romaine, celery heart, etc – and making vegetable broth. I keep these bits in a clean ziplock bag and when the bag is full it’s time to make a pot of broth. I wash and sort the stuff and dump it in my big enamel pot. I barely cover it with cold water, add a teaspoon of salt, and put a lid on it. I bring it to a very low simmer and leave it for about an hour. When the vegetables are faded and limp, it’s done. Yesterday I added spinach stems, which gave it an herby smell.

I strained out the soggy vegetables, and got about three cups of broth in a second smaller pan, which I brought to a boil. When it was bubbling away, I turned it off and set a raw boneless, skinless chicken thigh in the water, set the lid back on, and left it for 5 minutes. Voila! – that’s French for, “wow, smells like chicken!”

Then I put the chicken thigh, which is almost cooked on the outside but still raw on the inside, into the first pot, where I had sauteed some onions and garlic with a little oil. As I sauteed the chicken I cut it up with a fork and knife. This is how my husband cooks taco meat. Somehow it’s different than cutting it up raw and putting it in the pan.

To this I add about a quarter cup of cheap white wine. When the chicken still looks a little raw, I add the broth and get it going to a gentle simmer. Now I add chopped carrots and celery. In about a half hour I put in some egg noodles from the store, or maybe I have some homemade pasta leftover. Within 10 minutes it’s ready to eat.

I did this while I was working on my taxes – very soothing! By the time my husband came in from work, cold and wet (he did a job in the hills today, where it snowed), the aroma had made it down stairs to the front door – Welcome Home Honey! We washed up and brought the dogs in and sat down for a hot bowl of soup.

So we sat looking out the window at the two sisters fighting, treetops swaying, clouds of different colors moving in a swirl. We had Kris Kuyper on the tube, and he said there had been a funnel cloud spotted over O-ville!

Unfortunately Super Moon made her debut right ahead of a storm, so we have not seen much of her. I snapped this picture shortly before dawn the other day.

Every time I look at the moon I hear Dean Martin warbling away in my head... “When the moon’s in your eyes like a big pizza pie…”

So my husband and I decided to make a couple of calzones. We don’t make the traditional calzone – ours is more like a folded pizza. Traditional calzone has a little too much cheese for us.

Here we’ve set our bread dough on the pan like a regular pizza, but we only fill half of it. Just the usual chicken, mushrooms, onions, etc, sauteed in a pan.

We lay it on a little thicker than pizza, and we add cottage cheese instead of ricotta (which for some reason burns my stomach). Contrary to tradition, we add a tiny bit of tomato sauce for flavor.

I don’t know if I could do this all myself, I’ve never had to try. I make the dough ahead and my husband makes the filling. He fills the pie and then I fold and seal the edges.

Old hands are still good for something.

And there she goes, into a 400 degree oven, for about 20 – 25 minutes, until the top is good and brown, and she’s all puffing up like a Portuguese Man of War.

There’s that pizza stone we got at World Market for $15, along with a round screen we found stuck to the bottom of a take out pizza years ago. We put the cookie sheet underneath to roast some green beans.

The pizza stone is great, but with calzone we use the little metal screen, cause calzone can be a little stickier on the bottom than pizza, especially if it tears. We heat the screen on the stone, and then coat it with cooking oil and lay the dough on it to stuff it, then put it back on the hot stone.

We always make two of these bad boys, so while the second one was in the oven, we put in some oiled and salted string beans. Those were done just ahead of the second pie.

This one’s for you, Dino!

When I was looking at calzones online, I saw a lot of them were stuffed with spinach – next time, on This Old Calzone, with Juanita!

My husband and I were out running errands when we bumped into our old friend Jerry. Jerry’s always a guy to speak his mind – “you guys are crazy to shop at Safeway!” he opined. He suggested Winco and Food Maxx, assuring us all their stuff was high quality.

We realized we did need to shop around. We’ve shopped at Safeway for years because it is an easy bike ride from our house, but we thought we were being smart, buying on sale, and supplementing our pantry with trips to discount stores like Cash and Carry and Walmart. We hadn’t tried another grocery store for years.

Coincidentally we got a coupon from Food Maxx, offering not only cheap prices but free items – a 5 lb bag of russet potatoes, a case of bottled water, and a ROTISSERIE CHICKEN! Get the heck out! So we drove over to check it out.

The first thing I noticed was the strip mall it’s located in has seen better days, but the front of the store was no dirtier than Safeway has been the last year or so, and no bums standing around the entrance. The carts were clean, that’s a plus. But I was kind of intimidated by the unfamiliar surroundings.

That’s why I need to get out more. I get in a rut, and when unexpected changes come up I feel a thousand years old and suddenly senile. I couldn’t help but notice my husband and I were clinging to each other like a couple of baby bats.

We came out of it immediately in the produce section – lots of nice fruits and vegies, very fresh, and a lot cheaper than Safeway. We came for a free bag of potatoes, but I noticed bulk potatoes were half as much as Safeway. Some things were not that much cheaper, but really nice, like the spinach. It’s hard finding spinach that’s not all bruised and rotten in the center of the bunch. You can understand why a lot of people don’t like spinach. But Food Maxx had nice, firm, crisp green spinach for about $1.99 a bunch, I wish I had got two.

Here’s what you can do with spinach – spinach tacos!

We’d had chicken tacos the night before, and there was plenty of meat and beans left over. As I opened the bunch of spinach and handled those nice crispy leaves I immediately came up with an idea for lunch – we heated up the leftover taco filling, washed some big spinach leaves and lined them with strips of cheese and avocado slices. Look at those spinach tacos! Delicioso!

Of course for dinner that night we had half of our FREE ROTISSERIE CHICKEN. Pardon the caps, but it was exciting – we got two meals out of that bird, at a time when we are busy and tired in the evening and too broke to eat at a restaurant.

We spent $40 and got almost as much in free stuff. We were so happy with the little russets we got, we’ve had potatoes in one form or another at almost every meal. I always cook two extras for breakfast.

So, yeah, it does pay to change your habits and try something new once in a while. Get out there!

When I took the picture the flash caught the swirling mist all around me.

Something we haven’t had here in a few years is fog. I used to hate fog, but since the drought, I am glad to see it – this indicates our weather is changing in a new direction, maybe out of drought.

Well, be careful what you wish for.

We get all the best weather right here in the North State!

My husband went out of town for a couple of days to visit his dad, so I have been on my own with the dogs. I want to give them a good walk, dogs need their routine, but I worry that I can’t handle both of them, especially if a bigger, more aggressive dog comes along. So, I hit the trail at about 6:30 am to beat the Sunday crowd, my headlamp beaming back at me from a thick wall of fog.

In the light of my headlamp I could see why everything on my patio was dripping wet this morning.

I did not see another soul. We tramped along the trail, trying not to slip in goopy mud, watching all around for signs of life. January is usually a very gloomy time in Chico.

Gloomy time to spend a weekend alone! I try to keep myself cheered up by spending a lot of time outside with the dogs, working in the yard, keep the camp stove hot. And, you might think it’s not much fun to eat alone, but I always make myself a meal that my husband doesn’t particularly care for. At his suggestion, we went to Safeway the day before he left and bought me a pound of mussels.

This is about half a pound of mussels – about $3 worth – and more than enough for a skinny old lady.

Clams are nice, but the shells are heavier and they’re a dollar more a pound. You get a lot for your money with mussels, which are also very nutritious. My husband will eat them, but finds them a little strong, preferring clams. So when he’s out of town, I feast for a couple of nights on mussels.

Here’s another thing – they are a great one pan meal.

I start with vegetables cut up small, here an onion, half a zucchini and two mushrooms.

I’m too embarrassed to tell you how much butter I use, you be your own judge, jury and executioner. I like to get the vegies good and brown before I add a few ladles full of broth (which I had made earlier in the day by simmering some leftover romaine, cabbage, and celery hearts for about an hour). I slop in some cheap white wine too, never cook with anything that costs more than five or six bucks. I put in just enough liquid to steam the mussels.

I’ve eaten this two nights straight and looking at the picture I could sit down for another helping.

I cover those for three minutes while I hack off a piece of sourdough. Bob never gets stale, he ages to perfection, and a good rubbery sourdough heel is just what you need for a dish like this. Reminds me of sopas, the Portuguese bread soup, only with shell fish instead of beef.

A cabbage, carrot and celery salad with yogurt dressing and a slice of avocado on the side, and you got yourself a $20 meal.

I know I used to pay $12 for a side of mussels, no salad, at the Black Crow, and that place has been out of business for years. Why bother to eat out when you can get yourself a meal like this at home? The whole thing took me less than half an hour, and that’s counting the time it took to make a big bowl of salad and wash the mussels. Cost less than $5.

Another nice thing is, easy clean up – I ate everything but the shells and the pot!

I know, it’s been Winter for less than a month, but Spring is already trying to get her foot in the door.

Out walking my dogs in the fog this morning, I noticed those frilly daffodils are busting up along my driveway, this bunch already has buds on it. There are more bunches spreading down the driveway into my tenant’s yard – gophers? How do they do that?

The sprouts push right up through the gravel base in my driveway, it’s amazing.

See how hyacinth pushes the rocks aside to get to the sun.

Last year I didn’t get many daffodils, and only one bloom. The hyacinth didn’t bloom at all. Every Winter is different, so every Spring is different. Last year we had generous rains, with some cold hail storms, but not many Spring flowers. This year has been fairly dry and sunny, and the recent rains have been warm. Go figure.

I think that purple bud at center is an early bloom.

One of the red bud trees already has tiny clusters of flower buds.

See the tiny buds a little above-right of center – they will burst into the prettiest pink bunches. Red bud trees are native to this area, and once mature, need very little water.

The grass I planted is full of weeds.

This is how sticker weeds take over – they lift up and spread out and kill the grass. Some of these weeds can grow to the size of a dinner plate, and every sticker they produce is full of more seeds.

But if you mow at the right time, you can kill most of them. I’ll throw down the rest of the grass seed I bought, and with regular mowing and watering I can get a nice lawn going here again. I don’t need a perfectly manicured lawn, but I hope I can keep it from going to stickers again.

This has been an odd year – Hummer has been here almost all Winter, leaving only during the stormy weather. He isn’t completely dependent on flowers – I’ve watched him swishing around, doing his little bug-eating dance all day. But, he’s really happy about the rosemary blooming – I sat and watched him for a while yesterday, sitting at the top of our crepe myrtle tree, singing away, then diving pell-mell into the rosemary bush.

Sorry it’s blurry. This is what everything looks like to me when I can’t find my glasses.

These tiny purple flowers must be packed with nectar, Hummer spends his days guarding over and eating from this bush. He gets real testy about the rosemary – he’ll buzz you if you stand there too long. Biscuit likes to crawl inside this bush and scratch herself all over – the bush shakes. Hummer has just had to learn to get along with her.

I’ll tell you what’s nice – I like to break off a bundle of these rosemary branches and burn them in my camp stove – the smell is outrageous.